


Air

by PhantomDreamshade



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Adult Frisk, Ambiguous-Gender Frisk, Angst, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Other, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 18:56:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15322074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomDreamshade/pseuds/PhantomDreamshade
Summary: Sans' entire purpose in life was to make Frisk happy. Not out of altruism, of course - just to keep them from resetting. Well, stall a reset was probably more accurate. Even if it was just for one more day, that was one more day Papyrus got to be happy....He didn't mean to fall in love with them, but it happened anyway.





	Air

It was just a little ironic how his own autopilot had steered him wildly off course. Ten minutes into knowing them, Sans knew Frisk was the source of the resets. They hadn’t come across as malicious; there was something sad about them, something resigned. So, as soon as he determined the human wasn’t threatening, he devoted his life to making them happy.

It wasn’t out of altruism, of course. Sans thought that maybe, just maybe, with a few laughs he could stop Frisk from resetting. Perhaps stall them was a better choice of words, because Sans had the most certain feeling that he’d already tried and failed with that whole schtick before. But whatever he could do to give Papyrus just one more day under the sun, one more day to be happy, he did. And that mostly involved tailing Frisk wherever they went, cracking jokes and pulling harmless pranks. Any onlooker would have assumed they were the closest of friends, but both Sans and Frisk were aware that wasn’t the case. Frisk was Sans’ obsession, his purpose in life.

At least, Sans thought they were both aware of that. Frisk had an eerie omnipotence about them, no doubt from meeting Sans and his friends countless times, and they could read him far better than he was comfortable with. It lasted a few years like that - far longer than Sans ever thought it would, but his guard never dropped - and Frisk grew up. Though, he’d never considered them a child since the moment he’d met them. They had such a world-weary weight to them, acting far beyond what their years might suggest. He didn’t miss a beat when Frisk told him that they wanted to be more than friends, even if it surprised him. Whatever they wanted from him - his company, his time, his body - he’d give it to them, if only to stall for a little bit longer. Sans had given up on taking care of his own wants and needs a long, long time ago.

His sense of mild surprise never really went away over the next few months. It felt like Frisk really didn’t want anything from him; they just held his hand and leaned on his shoulder and asked for the occasional awkward kiss. They never made any indication that they wanted more than that, and Sans was halfway between relieved and horribly nervous. The last thing he wanted to happen was for Frisk to get bored of him. If they got bored of him, they’d reset.

To any onlooker, they were a cute couple, but Sans was miserable as always and he was fairly certain Frisk was, too. In all the time he’d known them, he’d never really seen them happy. He knew a mask when he saw one. So, even though one would think it would get easier as time passed, his mental state only kept deteriorating. It was like he had wires attached to his ribcage, and they were pulled so tight now that it was hard to breathe.

He felt the panic set in eventually; all his carefully-crafted walls of humor and apathy and excuses were all crumbling at the foundation, and he didn’t know what to do without them. It was only a matter of time before people would begin to notice his smile was out of desperation. The nightmares only got worse, as well - sometimes there was the knife, or Papyrus’ dusty clothes, but sometimes it was something else. Sans was almost sure someone else had power over the resets before Frisk. Something to do with vines. Vines snaking around his limbs and slithering into his skull and snapping apart his ribs.

The tension built and built until one night, it snapped. He woke up screaming on his bed; Papyrus was away at college and Frisk was sleeping on the couch. He felt like he was being strangled, so he ripped his t-shirt off; but they were still there. He could still feel the vines all over his bones, choking him, stealing his air, worming their way into every joint until Sans was begging to just fall apart at the seams so it would  _ stop. _

Frisk froze as they entered the room, seeing Sans’ magic flaring brightly in his eye socket as he clawed at his own ribcage. He spotted them immediately, and they put their hands up to show they weren’t a threat before beginning to back out of the room. Sans knew that Frisk knew they were the source of many of his night terrors, so they were just trying to give him the space that they thought he needed. But that wasn’t what he needed at the moment.

“pl… ease… don’t… lea… ve… me…” Sans managed to choke out. He didn’t have any air. He’d forgotten how to breathe. He was almost certain he was dying.

Frisk approached him slowly, Sans eyeing them the entire way as if they were a lifeline. They sat down next to him and placed a hand on his back gently, and he flung his arms around their neck and pulled them into a desperate kiss. Frisk made a little sound voicing their surprise, but gradually wrapped their arms around him in turn and pulled him close.

Sans didn’t really know why he did it; this kiss, sloppy and desperate through his tears. Maybe it was just to ground him. Maybe it was to prove he wasn’t scared of Frisk, because if they outright knew he’d been faking his affection they’d be done with him and they’d reset and send him back to that  _ thing _ . He pulled them down onto the bed, all without breaking the kiss, to rest on top of him with their hips between his legs. Maybe it was just some desperate attempt to keep them entertained and show them they could have anything they wanted from him. Maybe, deep down somewhere, he just wanted them to take him so he didn’t have to think for a little while.

Frisk made no move of the sort, though. They just rolled over on their side any held him tighter. It lasted for a while - too long, probably - before Sans just pulled away and buried his face in their neck, sobbing and rattling so much he sounded like a maraca. 

“don’t leave me,” he repeated, over and over and over into their skin until it became some sort of mantra. They didn’t protest at all; they just laid there and held him silently and rubbed his spine.

All his walls had finally shattered, now. He’d never meant to be so vulnerable with them; shirtless, sobbing, begging them not to leave. Partly because he was almost certain that wasn’t what they wanted from him, partly because he didn’t want to get attached, partly because it meant he would have to be vulnerable with himself. All the walls he’d made to keep other people from looking in kept himself from introspecting as well, because he didn’t want to sort through the sordid internal mess that was his soul.

He’d never meant to fall in love with them, and it was only then that he realized that he had a long time ago. Sans always expected Frisk to express some sort of morbid, impartial curiosity or dry, dead boredom, but they never had. In the moments he saw them, the real them that they almost always hid behind a wave and a flirtatious little smile, he saw someone drowning under the weight of the world just like he was. He didn’t just want to make them happy to keep them from resetting; some part of him knew that making them happy, truly happy for the first time since he’d met them would make his life worthwhile. And the thought of them getting bored of him didn’t just terrify him because he knew it would lead to a reset. It would confirm that they never really cared about him, and just the thought almost broke Sans.

He’d never meant to fall in love with them, but he was in deeper than either of them ever would have believed now. Sans had fallen for a god, and there wasn’t any path forward he could think of that didn’t end in tragedy. If Frisk left him and reset… he’d fall down, he knew. He could still see the scars on his soul from Papyrus’ death; scars that had healed bit by bit with his brother’s company, but they remained nonetheless. Frisk leaving would shatter what little will to live he had left, and no amount of resets would be able to fix it.

“i love you,” Sans whispered, and for the first time he actually meant it. He said it so sincerely that Frisk tensed up around him when he leaned up to kiss them again. It was less desperate this time, softer. Then he nuzzled back into their shoulder, and they fell asleep like that.

When Sans woke up the next morning, Frisk was no longer holding his body but just his hand. He felt a level of exhaustion he’d never experienced before, all of those chords that had been strangling his air for years hanging off of him like deadweight. Frisk sat up and let go of his hand.

“I have to go away for awhile,” they said. “There’s something important I have to do.”

Sans felt the world stand still around him. “okay,” he smiled, mind blank. It didn’t really sink in until Frisk was driving away. He slid to the ground, every ounce of strength gone.

Frisk was going to reset. He’d messed up last night. He’d freaked them out, and they were going to reset. Reset and leave him.

Sans couldn’t move; he just laid there in his awkward position on the floor. This was the last straw; he was done. He could feel his own life force dripping away. Was this what falling down felt like?

He couldn’t tell how long it had been - an hour? a day? a week? - before something happened. All at once his whole body was wracked with searing pain, and he convulsed on the ground. It felt like he was being burned alive. It seemed to last forever, and Sans was beginning to think he’d died and gone to hell.

And then it stopped. Sans could barely stay conscious; he looked over his body. No burns, no cracks, no scars. It had all been in his head. He was starving - he had to have been down here for days, but he still couldn’t bring himself to move.

That is, until he heard the door begin to open. It was probably Papyrus, visiting for the weekend. Sans couldn’t let him see him like this. He dragged himself off of the floor before realizing he still hadn’t put a shirt on, but it was too late for that now.

It wasn’t Papyrus, but Frisk. Sans felt his soul skip a beat. They came back. They hadn’t reset.

And something was wrong with them - their skin was deathly pale, there were dark, dark circles under their eyes, and their feet shuffled across the floor. Sans stumbled over to them, looking over them with some confusing mixture of elation and terror. They gave him a little smile, but their eyes were streaming broken tears.

Sans put his arms around them gently, and Frisk winced as he touched their back as if he’d stung them. “frisk?” Their shoulders were hunched over as if they were in pain. He turned them around and lifted up the back of their shirt, ignoring their protests.

Their back was covered in big, black, circular bruises and little pinprick holes that were trickling blood. He set the shirt back down slowly and looked at them, horrified. They glanced away.

“who did this to you?” he asked, and Frisk seemed surprised by his intensity. Sans could feel unadulterated  _ rage _ boiling up through his ribs. He thought he understood that unholy pain he’d experienced - he was feeling some degree of what Frisk had gone through. He had a soul bond with them; it was something that happened gradually with the people one cared about, but Sans never knew they were close enough for him to share pain like that. Or maybe that was just his soul beginning to splinter apart when he felt Frisk come close to dying.

Frisk just walked back into the bedroom and sat down on the bed, where Sans followed them. They looked at him, still smiling, and Sans had never seen them so resigned.

“You’re free now,” they told him, and Sans had no idea what they were talking about. “You aren’t beholden to me anymore.”

“...what?” Sans asked, putting a hand on their knee. Frisk pushed it away, and he felt like he’d been stabbed.

“I know you hate me,” they whispered.

“i don’t hate you,” Sans said. Why would they think that? How could he have let them think that?

“I know you know about everything I’ve done,” they said, voice cracking. “I know you never loved me. I know you hate me for it.”

“no, no, no,” he said, voice wavering as well.

“It’s gone,” Frisk said. “My determination. I went to Alphys’ old lab and got rid of it. You don’t… you don’t have to pretend anymore. You’re free now.” Sans stared at them disbelievingly, and Frisk summoned their soul.

It had been bleached almost white, covered in a spiderweb of cracks and flaky-looking like ash. Sans felt his breathing hitch. To say Frisk had survived by a hair’s breadth was an understatement. That soul was hovering on the edge between life and death. Sans had no idea how they’d even managed to make it here.

But… he couldn’t help but feel drawn to it. Revealing one’s soul to someone like this - there was nothing more intimate to a monster, if not necessarily in a romantic sense. Before he even realized what he was doing, he brushed his fingers along it and was hit with a tidal wave of emotions.

There was so much self-loathing. So much of it that it Sans was afraid he might drown in it. If he didn’t drown in the self-hatred, he was certain he would drown in the guilt. There was also, somehow, powerlessness. There was lack of purpose. But there was also love, so much love; love for Papyrus, love for Toriel, love for Asgore, love for Alphys, love for Undyne.

Love for Sans.

Frisk loved him. It wasn’t curiosity, it was  _ love _ , deep, deep love. Sans felt himself crying again as Frisk’s soul dissolved back into their chest. It had been so long since Sans had felt joy like this, it almost seemed like he’d never felt it before.

Frisk must have mistaken his tears to be of some other purpose. They looked away guiltily. “I didn’t want to do any of it,” they said, their voice barely audible. “My whole life, I’ve felt… controlled. Like I’m watching a movie inside my own body. All of it, every ounce of the Underground, I never felt like I had a choice in what I did. It just… happened.”

Sans looked at them wide-eyed as they continued. “When we got to the surface… I could move again. But that… that  _ force _ was still there, in the back of my head. It never went away. And then, one day, it would come back and I would reset. I could never stop it.

“Until… until now,” they said, and Sans held his breath. “It just… went away. It finally let me get rid of my determination like I wanted to from the very first time we got to the surface.”

Sans grabbed their hand, and Frisk began to slump towards the wall. “You’re… free… now…” they said, breathing going shallow. “You can… live your life… without… me in… the way…”

“frisk?” Sans said as their eyes fluttered shut. He could feel his soul start to split apart again. “frisk? no, no, nonono.”

He wrapped his arms around them, careful not to touch their bruises. “i wasn’t pretending frisk, i… i love you. i love you. frisk, don’t… not now. you can’t leave me now, frisk, please… don’t leave me. don’t leave me, frisk, please… i love you…” He buried his face in their neck again.

Maybe he just fell asleep like that, or maybe he blacked out, but Sans woke up an indeterminate amount of time later, still curled around Frisk. They were still breathing, if shallowly. He looked them over again, and their eyes slid open just a little.

“You can leave,” they told him, as if they wanted to believe that he loved them but still didn’t.

...Sans knew what he had to do. He summoned his soul without a second thought - bleached, shriveled, covered in a spiderweb of cracks. He stared at it himself for a second. He’d never shown his soul to anyone before, not even Papyrus.

“Sans, no,” Frisk said as Sans grabbed their hand and pulled it upward.

“it’s only fair. you showed me yours,” Sans said.

“You don’t have to… make me happy anymore,” Frisk told him.

Sans kissed their knuckles. “i  _ want _ to. i  _ want _ to show you,” he said, bringing their hand up to touch his soul.

Frisk’s breathing hitched. The self-loathing was there. So was the powerlessness, and the guilt. And there was love for Papyrus, so much of it that it almost overwhelmed everything else.

But there was terror, too. Frisk didn’t quite understand it at first, until they felt the joy; light and airy, like a weight being lifted. The terror was of losing that joy, and of something else. There was love for someone else.

Sans loved them. They started crying when they realized it. Sans put his soul back in his ribcage and held them as gently as he could, and they both just laid there for hours until they cried themselves to sleep.

When Sans woke up before the next dawn, he felt changed. The weight in the air, dark and heavy and always threatening to grind him into dust, was gone. The cables tied to his ribs, the ones that stole his breath, were gone. He felt like he could breathe for the first time in a thousand lifetimes. This, he decided, was what peace felt like.

Frisk stirred and opened their eyes slowly. Sans smiled at them. “hey.”

Frisk still looked guilty, unsure. Sans placed a hand on their cheek and rubbed his thumb along their jawline. “ _ we’re _ free now,” he told them. “okay?”

There was fear there in Frisk’s eyes, too, he noticed. “I never knew who I was back then,” they told him. “I know even less now.”

“you get to decide now,” Sans said. “and i’ll help you, we all will. and i’ll always love you. we get to breathe now, frisk. just feel it - the air. it’s lighter now.”

Sans leaned forward and kissed them, slow and sweet. Frisk wrapped their arms around his back, and they laid there until the sun peeked through the window.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, uh... I made a Tumblr? Go check that out, my name’s phantomdreamshade over there too. Or don’t. I’m not the boss of you.


End file.
